Me: I'm sore today.
Rhetorical Me: Is it because I did a somewhat hilly 12 mile run on Saturday?
Me: Nah, it's upper-body thing.
Rhetorical Me: Maybe I injured myself while running? Perhaps crashing spectacularly into a tree, or house, or Golden Gate Bridge?
Me: Nope. It's a muscle type of soreness. And it's really just the right arm.
Rhetorical Me: The right arm, eh? Soooo, some sort of furious masturbatory session gone awry?
Me: Nice. That's nice. No, I believe that I am sore today from....

Playing with my Nintendo Wii! And despite it's penis-like name, I WASN'T masturbating with it. Although, I bet they could make a kick-ass masturbatory game with the motion-controlled controller.

The last time I stood in an unmoving line for more than 15 minutes was in 1980 waiting for The Empire Strikes Back to open up. I can't say I'm proud of the nonexistent maturation that has transpired in the last 27 years. To be honest, the main difference between this experience and the one in 1980 is that I have more acne now. That's cool though. You gotta pick at something in line.

I stood in line outside of Best Buy for about an hour, not knowing whether or not I'd even get a Wii. As it turns out, they had 51 available, and I was number 48 in line. While there was a lot of backslapping and asthmatic snorting when the Wii tickets were passed out, I was minorly annoyed to realize that I could have slept another 5 or 10 minutes and snuck in under the wire at number 51 instead of 48. Then, there was another 90 minutes of line-standing that was even more excruciating because the anticipation part was over. It was like being asked to stand in line AFTER seeing The Empire Strikes Back.

Anyway, I can happily report that the Nintendo Wii is plenty of fun. Accessible enough for non-gamers to try, but subtle and intriguing enough for moderate gamers to still find satisfying.

I've heard reports that people feel silly "boxing" or swinging at imaginary balls in their living room, that somehow they feel foolish playing virtual tennis/baseball/etc. That has NOT been my experience. As someone who sucks at baseball, tennis, bowling, etc, I can assure you that the virtual version of these sports is the only version so far that DOESN'T make me feel foolish. I can pretend that I'm coordinated when I swing at an imaginary baseball. That illusion gets shattered pretty quickly when I smack a real bat into my real forehead.

Also, I can work up a decent sweat with the Wii. My puny muscles can attest to this.

Long live the virtualthlete!